May Palacpac Art studio

May Palacpac: Painting a Life Well Lived

Some artists spend a lifetime learning how to paint. For emerging artist May Palacpac, painting became a way of bringing together a lifetime of living.

Before she ever exhibited her work, MayPal had already spent years immersed in the arts. She was a professional singer for fifteen years, a writer for even longer, and a lifelong observer of people and the stories they carry. Yet despite a childhood love for drawing, visual art was never presented to her as a realistic path. It would take years before she found her way back.

That journey began quietly through brush lettering and watercolor. What started as a creative outlet soon grew into something deeper – a search for a visual language capable of expressing the thoughts, experiences, and questions that had accumulated over a lifetime.

Today, MayPal‘s work moves between seemingly opposite worlds: the storytelling simplicity of naïve art and the instinctive energy of gestural abstraction. Rather than seeing these approaches as contradictory, she embraces both as ways of exploring what it means to be human. Her work is often marked by texture, vibrant color, and a touch of whimsy, but beneath the surface is an artist continually searching for the most honest way to translate life onto canvas.

Much of that life is rooted in creativity. Married to a fellow musician and multi media artist, Jay, and raising children devoted to dance, music and visual art, she creates from a home where creativity and imagination is part of everyday living.

A storyteller at heart, MayPal paints about family, childhood, relationships, and the beauty hidden within ordinary moments. While she acknowledges the importance of art that confronts struggle and difficult truths, she is equally drawn to creating work that celebrates faith in God, hope, wonder, and the simple joy of being alive.

As an emerging artist, she continues to evolve, guided less by the pursuit of a fixed style than by a desire to communicate something true. Through her work, she offers viewers a gentle reminder that life, despite its complexities, is profoundly worth living.

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
— John 10:10

–26 June 2026–